11 Store-Bought Condiments To Avoid Adding To Tuna Salad

Tuna salad is one of those quick dishes that's always easy to whip up, even when you only have a few minutes to spend in the kitchen. Canned tuna is the main ingredient, which is then elevated by various spices and sauces. But to build the best possible tuna salad, you have to make sure you're using the right ingredients. After all, just a drizzle of a less-than-delicious condiment can turn your delicious salad into something more akin to a tuna disaster.

You've probably heard a lot about what you should be adding to your tuna salad, but what about the ingredients that you definitely shouldn't include? We've compiled a list of some store-bought condiments that may seem like a good idea to add to tuna salad but that you would honestly do well to avoid. The best tuna salads are simple at their core, and these condiments just unnecessarily gunk them up.

Of course, you know your taste buds best, so if you actually love some of the ingredients we have listed here, then go ahead and use them to your heart's content. But for those who are unsure of best tuna salad practices, you should stay far away from these tuna salad condiments.

We know what you're thinking: Aren't there a ton of tuna salad recipes out there that call for Dijon mustard? You're not wrong, but those recipes are. While we love a small squirt of mustard in our tuna salad, Dijon just isn't the right choice. You want a bright, unfussy, uncomplicated dose of acidity in your tuna salad, not a rich, complex, almost fruity flavor addition. Unfortunately, Dijon provides the latter. The same qualities that make it delicious in a wide variety of other uses are exactly what make it inappropriate for a tuna salad. Since you've got so many other flavors going on in this type of salad, the Dijon just kind of clashes, leaving you wishing you had something simpler on your plate.

Ditch the Dijon for your next tuna salad recipe, and save it for some other use. You can instead opt for a yellow mustard or just use a bit of lemon juice or vinegar for acidity instead.

We don't know what would possess you to try to put ketchup in your tuna salad in the first place, but let this be all the warning you need: Ketchup absolutely does not belong in tuna salad. The tomato-based sauce has some acidity to it, of course, which you do need in a good tuna salad recipe. However, that acidity is largely overshadowed by sweetness from added sugar, and even lower-sugar varieties of ketchup can still seem quite sweet on the palate. That sweetness does not complement tuna, which works best when it's bolstered by more savory ingredients.

Yes, there are plenty of tuna and tomato dishes out there, and many of them are delicious. But they don't tend to boast the significant sugar content that ketchup does. Therefore, this is a condiment you can leave in the fridge the next time you decide to make a batch of tuna salad.

We really don't want to be the mustard police here, and we've already told you not to use Dijon mustard in your tuna salad. But an even more offensive sin is spiking your tuna salad with honey mustard. Listen, we get it. Sometimes, you don't want to go to the grocery store, and you have what seems like a close-enough ingredient in your fridge. But when it comes to the kind of mustard you should use in a tuna salad recipe, honey mustard is just not going to cut it. It's way too sweet, and that extra sugar has no place in your tuna salad. It's likely to clash with bold ingredients like raw onion, and it's missing the sharp acidity you need to tie everything together.

Honey mustard has a time and a place, and it can play a starring role in a good sandwich. When you're adding various condiments to your tuna salad, though, honey mustard should be the last sauce on your mind.

There are so many different barbecue sauces out there to choose from, and their flavors run the gamut from sugary and sweet to bold and acidic. But they all have one thing in common: They are way too much for fish. After all, BBQ sauce is typically designed for deeply flavored cuts of meat like beef and pork. Even chicken can sometimes be overpowered by a particularly sticky barbecue sauce. So, what makes you think a humble can of tuna can possibly stand up to the flavor of a bold barbecue sauce?

A tangy BBQ sauce in your tuna salad is bad enough, but even worse is a sauce that's super sweet. Just like with the ketchup and honey mustard, barbecue sauce tends to have too much added sugar, which can easily overpower the flavor of the fish and clash with other, more savory ingredients. Save the barbecue sauce for your next cookout, and spare your tuna salad from the scourge of a sauce intended for a thick cut of steak.

Most tuna salad enthusiasts will tell you that mayonnaise is perhaps the most important condiment in tuna salad. It plays multiple roles, offering a touch of lemony acidity as well as a creamy texture and a rich fattiness that makes lean tuna taste more decadent and indulgent. And because it has so many jobs, it's important to make sure that you're using the best-quality mayonnaise possible. Unfortunately, you'll run into a lot of low-quality mayonnaise brands out there, so it's a good idea to do some mayo research before you settle on the brand you want to use.

For the most richness and creamiest texture, we recommend kewpie mayo. Kepie prominently features MSG, a salt-like food additive that gives the mayonnaise a unique umami flavor, which works especially well with tuna. Give it a try — or stick to your favorite go-to mayo — the next time you make tuna salad.

Pickle relish may seem like a fairly innocuous addition to tuna salad, one that's often called for in recipes, so you may be wondering how it earned itself a place on this list. It's not because pickle relish is particularly bad when it appears in tuna salad. Rather, it's just that there's a better alternative. Fresh pickles are far superior to pickle relish in a tuna salad. The most important factor is the crunch — you don't really get much at all when you use pickle relish, but you get quite a lot when you opt for fresh pickles instead. Tuna that's missing much of a crunchy, snappy element feels boring, flat, and bland, and pickles provide both that textural element along with a note of acidity.

If you are going to use pickle relish, though, you should make absolutely sure you're buying the dill pickle variety. Sweet relish has no place in tuna salad under any circumstances. Offenders must go straight to tuna salad jail.

Olive oil may seem like a classy, sophisticated addition to tuna salad, but we're not here for it. That's mostly because we prefer to use tuna packed in oil, not in water. Tuna that's packed in oil is more moist and flavorful than its leaner counterpart, which is what makes it our first choice when we're using canned tuna for anything but especially for tuna salad. But when you are using tuna packed in oil, there's really no need to add extra olive oil to the equation. After all, you're probably draining oil off of the tuna in the first place, so there's no need to put it back in.

In tuna salad, olive oil is also often used in place of mayonnaise, and it's just not an adequate replacement. Mayonnaise offers so much more than just fat — it's also a vehicle of creaminess and acidity, two areas in which olive oil fails miserably. Therefore, you can put your favorite bottle of olive oil back in the pantry and keep it there while you're making your tuna salad.

This is another instance in which the condiment in question doesn't exactly taste bad in tuna salad but just really shouldn't be there anyway. That's because there's a much easier way to incorporate the flavor of celery into your tuna salad: Just add some celery. Real celery is important for so much more than its flavor. More than any other ingredient, raw celery provides the crunch tuna salad so desperately needs. Just add in some extra salt, and it'll achieve the same flavor as celery salt. Sure, celery salt offers that specific flavor you may be trying to capture, but it's just a sad shortcut for the real thing.

When you're in a pinch and you really don't have celery on hand, celery salt can make for a valid inclusion in your tuna salad recipe. But in no way should it eclipse real celery in the version of tuna salad you make when you're not running out of groceries and feel too lazy to go to the store.

There are times when you can make "healthy" swaps in your favorite recipes, and the flavor of the finished dish isn't affected much. Those swaps are perfect for when you're trying to watch what you eat for whatever reason. But there are other times when "healthy" swaps go too far and compromise the integrity of the dish itself. And when you're subbing Greek yogurt for mayonnaise in your tuna salad recipe, you know you've fallen directly into the "gone too far" category.

Despite the visual similarities between mayonnaise and Greek yogurt, they are not even close to the same ingredients. Even full-fat Greek yogurt could never boast the rich, creamy decadence of the best mayo. So, when you add it to your tuna salad in place of mayonnaise, the results are always going to be disappointing. There's just not enough fat there, and the creaminess will be conspicuously missing. If you're trying to cut down on your mayo consumption, you may be better off just using less mayo instead of omitting it entirely and replacing it with an alternative as sad as Greek yogurt. And for the love of all that is delicious, don't even think about using fat-free Greek yogurt in this context.

Ranch dressing is another white sauce that may be hanging out in your fridge, ready to be used in a recipe. Although it may look similar enough to mayo to use in your tuna salad, it's a substitute that just doesn't really work. Ranch dressing has a ton of different spices in it, creating a very distinct flavor. That flavor is so distinct, in fact, that it can overpower any other flavors you're trying to harness in your tuna salad. Because it takes center stage in the recipe, covering up the delicate flavors of the fish itself, you're left with a salad that basically tastes like ranch and nothing else.

And sure, ranch is somewhat creamy, but that still doesn't mean it has the right consistency for tuna salad. It's much thinner than mayonnaise is, which means it doesn't bind the ingredients together in the way you'd want it to. You're better off putting the ranch aside and sticking with the mayo for the best results.

This is another "healthy" swap that just really doesn't work on the flavor front. Avocado is a beloved ingredient that many people love to add to their salads for its creamy texture. Therefore, you may think you can swap avocado for mayonnaise in your tuna salad recipe. However, avocado, too, is missing that certain something that makes mayonnaise work so well here. It doesn't boast any acidity, and it's not quite as creamy as a good mayo.

So, what if you add the mayo and the avocado together? Of course, if you really like avocado, this may sound appealing, but those relatively flavorless chunks are doing you no real favors in a tuna salad. If you already have that creamy element covered by the mayonnaise itself, then avocado starts to seem like pointless, fatty chunks that do nothing to improve the flavor of the salad. Save your avocados to use for another application instead.